Respiration
by LoyalPaddler
Summary: Sherlock once said breathing is boring. John knows that there are moments in life when breathing is not only not boring, it's nearly impossible. Another drop in the ocean of possibilities for the reunion.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: I'm new. Go easy on me. Just for the record, this is not how I actually expect the reunion to go. Also, I realize that 'spasmed' is not a word. I don't own these characters. Thanks, team.

* * *

When John Watson was invalided home from Afghanistan, he forgot how to breathe. It had nothing—and everything—to do with his injury. He'd startle himself at odd moments with his inability to draw a full breath, and at night, his dreams could knock the wind right out of him. He thought little about it though—the limp and the tremor got the attention—because each time he concentrated, he found his lungs in proper working order. But somehow, that didn't help him lose the feeling that he was running out of air.

Until Sherlock.

That first night—the night they chased the cab—John's lungs had stretched with the effort of running. And when they'd stood panting in the hallway, he'd let out a breathy giggle, and that was that. The trouble with his lungs was simply erased from his mind, and though he _marveled _at the cure for the psychosomatic limp, it never occurred to him that Sherlock's mad magic trick had freed John's breath as well.

Now, there was _always_ air. There was air in his lungs to yell Sherlock's name in the moments before he shot the cabbie. Air to run through London streets and rail yards. Air to speak, and cajole, and praise, and scold. Air—even when his chest was weighed down with explosives and the words were not his.

Certainly, there had been that breathless moment at the pool where he'd gone light-headed from relief and suppressed fear, but even then it had been different. The air was still within reach.

In fact, without fail, the air was _always_ within reach: questions, fights, fits of laughter, compliments, reprimands, sighs, groans. But it didn't matter that he used so much. John Watson had all the air in the world.

Until the pavement.

And after.

Until the quiet.

John relearned, then, that quiet can _burn_. Stillness can ache. That the wrongness of displacement is heavier than oxygen, and it will fill your lungs from the bottom up until there simply is not enough room to accommodate all the air you once claimed.

It made it hard to breathe.

Eventually, the world turned its voracious eyes in some other direction, leaving John to the business of soldiering onward. John Watson was not a coward, so he worked his lungs. He pushed back against empty, adapted to breathless. He moved on, repositioned, made changes, and all the while he kept himself breathing.

He got better at it, of course he did, until he could almost tell himself that it wasn't so different. That it didn't matter that he only used the top half of his lungs. He had _enough _air, certainly. So what did it matter if it was no longer a limitless supply?

For three years, John Watson kept breathing.

Until the morning when he ran out of breath entirely.

Far from Bart's hospital, far, far from Baker Street, near his new lodgings, John yanked a man out of harm's way, looked into the man's face, and stopped breathing.

Because it turned out he'd been _wrong_ about a lot of things.

The ensuing bottleneck of emotion cut off what little of his chest was still open to pedaling oxygen, and for the first time in his life, John just _stopped. _

"John." There was so much riding on _that_ voice that his mind locked into a skid. Pain slicked across his skin, and his vision began to tunnel away.

The detective's eyes flickered.

"John?" he said again, becoming concerned.

John's chest spasmed once, twice, but otherwise he was at a complete halt. The taller man's eyes went wide.

"John, take a breath," he ordered.

John heard but did not quite comprehend. The burning quiet had gotten into his chest, and there wasn't room inside him for anything else.

"_Watson! _Take a breath!"

But John was locked down, filled out with half-formed emotion and pain. The world was going gray.

Fisting his hands in John's jacket, the detective towed him around and slammed him backwards into the nearest wall, compressing his chest.

"_Breathe._"

The impact forced everything—_everything—_out of John's lungs. The air from the depths, the air that had been trapped in his chest since that day on the pavement, rushed up his throat in the form of a sound. It was barely audible but entirely uncensored. It was the dregs of the words he'd spoken—_He's my friend, please!—_the last echo of his plea, the heavy displacement, and so much horrid silence. And it _burned_.

The detective absorbed the sound like a blow, but he did not retreat.

"Breathe," he insisted, quieter now.

John did. He drew the air in deep and let it hit bottom, then slid it noisily back out between his lips. Deep breaths. Like the night at the pool.

The detective hadn't released his grip on John's coat, so he felt the moment when John's breath settled into its familiar rhythm—when John settled back into himself. John blinked slowly, let out another breath, raised his eyes.

_There._

John's face was hard, eyes harder—angry, yes angry, and demanding, and bracing, and **_believing_**.

This time it was with a tone of recognition: "John."

"_Sherlock_."


	2. Chapter 2

And Sherlock's thoughts on the matter... Thanks for reading, team.

* * *

From the moment he stepped off the tube, Sherlock was searching. He was looking for a reason, an explanation, as to why John had chosen _this._ What had brought him here? To this unimpressive part of town?

When Sherlock left, he'd made certain that John could stay in 221B. His "estate" had paid the rent there for the next five years. But John had _not _stayed. He'd moved out of 221B within a matter of weeks and had eventually taken up residence in a tiny one-bedroom bedsit on the outskirts of London. What Sherlock didn't understand was _why. _Copy shops, nail parlors, a dry cleaners…nothing here to pique John's interest.

It had bothered Sherlock, he would admit, when John left Baker Street. Sherlock had liked the idea of knowing his friend's whereabouts, of being able to picture John's life—reading the paper in his armchair, passing down the wall-papered stairwell on his way to work. It was _comforting_, but it hadn't lasted. John had left the flat, and Sherlock had no mental picture of where he had gone.

Because he'd gone to _this. _Sherlock had already traveled four of the five and a half blocks toward John's flat, and he still hadn't seen anything that would explain why John had chosen to relocate here.

A new thought dawned on him, halting his feet. It was midday. John was at work, nowhere near here. But John passed this way each day. Surely by now he'd left some kind of sign of his passage?

Sherlock's mind leapt at the challenge—could he find evidence of his friend here? Could he differentiate John's presence from the rest of the crowds that passed this way?

Sherlock didn't bother to think about _why _he was suddenly so desperate to find proof of his friend. Why his heart had sped up, why his eyes were wide as he searched the pavement, looking, looking, spinning, searching—_there must be something, __**something! **_

A car horn blared, someone grabbed him and yanked him back onto the sidewalk. They stumbled from the momentum, Sherlock looked up into his rescuer's face, and —

For a single beat, the grand total of Sherlock's thoughts was simply: _John. _

And then like a spark on a fuse, his brain fired into action.

_John: Staring. Chapped lips parted slightly. Hair, longer. Skin, pale. Thin. Leather jacket purchased two years ago, serviceable but inexpensive. Standing upright, hands hanging limp, unmoving and _alive.

"John." He didn't consider the emotion that had accompanied his voice. He was too busy preparing for John's reaction, for whatever might come next.

But John didn't move.

Sherlock swept his eyes over him again, coming up with more information. Below the jacket, a button down—he'd been at work that morning. The bottom three inches of his trousers were wet, but it hadn't rained anywhere in London that day, and John was home early, so a burst pipe at the clinic? He looked into John's face again, noting differences that snapped displeasure through his insides: new lines around eyes and forehead, thin—previously noted, but perhaps worrisome, had he been ill?—and completely still.

Sherlock had seen John go still many, many times. Part of his soldier's instincts, Sherlock expected, but John still hadn't so much as blinked.

"John?"

The only response was a slight movement in John's chest—once, twice. Not a breath but a muscle spasm, and now John was beginning to look gray—Sherlock's eyes widened—because—

"John, take a breath," he ordered. And for the first time, he really looked at the _expression _in John's eyes. John wasn't hearing him, and he looked on with…with? It wasn't vacancy, it wasn't panic, Sherlock didn't _know_ what he was seeing in his friend's eyes, but it didn't matter because John wasn't _breathing._

"_Watson_! Take a breath!"

Nothing. No response. Sherlock didn't even think John was seeing him anymore. The detective was seized with the terrifying thought that he was _losing him_, right there on the sidewalk in the middle of the day, _losing_ his friend to the unfamiliar distance in his eyes, _losing John Watson, all because John would not—_

"_Breathe!" _he shouted, pummeling John into the wall, forcing John's chest to compress.

The air from John's lungs was knocked upwards, and it brought with it a sound. It was involuntary in the extreme, and therefore, brutally real: a warped scrap of sound pressed out of a reluctant throat, bearing a compound of emotion so intense it _stunned _Sherlock to hear it.

The detective's own chest tightened in response, and his mind offered him a word: _heartbreak_.

That sound was the last echo of the breaking of John Watson's heart.

Sherlock swallowed clumsily and reminded himself that hearts do not actually _break_, and more importantly, that he could _feel _John's heart beating under his hands.

So he focused on John's eyes, maintained his grip on John's jacket, and ordered: "Breathe."

John obeyed and took a deep breath. Two. Three. Closed his eyes. Settled. Breathed out another. Opened his eyes.

_There_.

"John."

John Hamish Watson—doctor, soldier, crack-shot blogger, with the jumpers, and the high moral standards, and the innumerable cups of tea-looking back at him with clear eyes and another loaded expression. Furious and injured and questioning, and beneath it all…

Believing.

Dogged, damnable, loyal heart.

"_Sherlock_."

Sherlock Holmes had never been more grateful in his life.


End file.
